Bloody Smile

Was this to be his last sight, then? These bloody-red gums, these rusty, iron teeth? Where were the Gods to defend him from Bloody Smile?

Special Equipment:

Bloody Smile’s teeth are made from rusting, jagged iron. His nails are sharp spikes of iron, and his hair is made of thin, slicing brass fibers.
Within his stomach he carries iron balls, studded with spikes, and a long heavy chain. He keeps daggers under the skin of his upper arms.

Appearance:

Bloody Smile is horrible wreck of a living being, barely recognizable as human.
He stands about 5 feet 7 inches tall, with long arms and bowed legs. His hands are feet are wide and splay-fingered, with long, curved nails made from stained black iron.
His stomach is flabby, with a pronounced paunch, while his limbs are anorexically thin.
The hair upon his arms and chest is blood-clotted and matted, stained black, but originally a dark brown. His upper chest, neck, and lower lip are stained brown with ancient crusts of blood. His head appears to have a wild, stiff mane of shiny red-gold hair, but this is actually a slashing mass of thin brass fibers.
His namesake smile is ghastly- rotten, bleeding gums, peeling back from jagged teeth of black iron, clotted red and brown and black with an armor of rust and crusting blood.
He wears no clothing- it is too easy to pass as a vagrant in his current state, should he need to. He merely must dull his copper mane and hide his iron talons, and he is just another crawler in the alleyways.

Background:

Golden Blossom, Priest of the God Shining White, carefully pared out portions of the necessary raegents. These he sprinkled into the torches of the temple so that their flames burned hot and pale, providing the proper illumination for the path to the Inner Shrine. The night sighed from outside the doors- Golden Blossom listened to the rustle of the temple’s garden, and to the croaking of frogs by the ceremonial pool. He loved midnight the best- when better was there to gaze up and see Shining White?

As Golden Blossom moved through the acolytes’ quarters, past sleeping initiates on pallets of straw, he lifted his own pallets, and opened the tiny mahogany box, inserting his key into it. It opened with a click, showing within his illicit pleasure- powdered Bright Morning, the dust which made one see spirits and rainbows, the dust of happiness. The dust forbidden to priests, especially to priests of his hieratic stature.

Taking his precious Bright Morning into his flask, he replaced his pallet and went toward the observatory. This was not a Night of Prayer, on which all priest would be at the telescope to view the Gods and say the sacred Sutras, so Golden Blossom was alone in the deserted Chamber of Stars. Murals of the Gods lined the walls, with a statue of Shining White nodding sternly from the back wall. Golden Blossom took refuge from that judging glance- it was wrong to do this transgression in his God’s idol’s sight.

He raised the flask to his lips, and prepared to drink, when came a clank from shadow-inked recess of the Alcove of the East Star- a squeak, then, as a rusting hinge. Something stepped into the starlight.

Golden Blossom gasped. A stained wreck of a man- with a sagging paunch and twig-like limbs, and a stiff mane of glimmering gold-red, like a ghoul crouching bowlegged before the telescope. But this was no demon or spirit, or Golden Blossom would have known what to do- this was unmistakeably Bloody Smile!

The piteous man-corpse, crawled forward, snuffling with a scarred nose which dripped blood and mucus upon the floor. That horrible mouth babbled, dripping blood and saliva and flakes of rust. There was no escaping it. It came into the shadow were Golden Blossom sat, stunned, his lovely powder forgotten as cast upon the floor.

With a voice like iron sand scraped across slate, Bloody Smile said:
“My master, the Priest Dog Drinks From The Pool, bids me tell you this- your blood is tainted. You are not fitting in the God’s sight.”

Golden Blossom tried to scramble back, but there was no escaping. He could not stand, for above him was the bulk of the telescope. Bloody Smile opened those cracked lips.

Was this to be his last sight, then? These bloody-red gums, these rusty, iron teeth? Where were the Gods to defend him from Bloody Smile?

—————————————————————————————-

When Bloody Smile was born, his father, a sorceror, offered him to Demons in return for great power. Blood Smile was taken, and his bones were replaced with a structure of steel, and his muscles with thinly-stretched sheets of mercury. His skin was rubbed with the bile of murderers and he ate the veins of rapists for his meals. The hairs of his head were torn out and replaced with fibers of brass, and his nails were replaced with claws of iron, and his teeth with ridges of iron.
With their magic, the Demons chained Bloody Smile’s soul to the gatepost of their house, and so he will never escape, unless he pays them what he has cost them to raise, the amount of which they multiply each day by the number of days which he has been owned by them- thus he will never be free.
Bloody Smile hires himself out as a murderer to attempt to pay the Demons. He can only be contacted in the hour before sunrise in the city of Natte when the flies sing of rot and pestilence. He must be payed in the heads of mice and snakes, and in a captured memory of anger and pain.

Roleplaying Notes:

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The delivery is top notch, and the imagry vivid and disturbing. Sometimes I wonder what sort of drugs the captain is on to come up with this stuff, and wonder where I can get a stash of my own. It is a delightful emulsion of Exalted, and Lovecraft. The flakes of rust in the blood was a nice touch.

I think I might have done some description with his eyes as they are the windows to the soul (hence many soulless creatures are depicted without eyes such as the Nazgul, Myrdraal, and the aliens from the Alien movies.) I would make them wide, and perhaps the only indicator that the character of blood, rust and ruin is not a monsterous construct, or demon, but was once a human being.

Well he is interesting, but quite difficult to interact with. There is a limited number of purposes he can be used for...
He can be: scary, pitiable, repulsive
The plots are: buy his service, protect his victim to be, and: help him be free.
Hm.
Certainly a good alternative assassin, and a strong image that will burn in player's minds...
For more inspiration, try Luis Royo's III Millenium

That's disturbing. One pressing issue that could affect this guy: he eats the veins of rapists, right? Well, what if people stop raping each other? Will he starve? Or what if HE rapes someone? Will he end up eating his own veins? Or would he just FORCE people to rape each other? I can see it now, unfortunately: "All right, step lively, I've got an hour until lunch, people!" Heh heh heh. Great job, man, very freaky.

This is a really... strange submission. When I read it I wasn't thinking Lovecraft, and now I still don't think Lovecraft would be the way to describe this guy. I think more of when we think of evil and demons and undead we make all of the terrible things they are more abstract; like we don't realize just how depraved they are, we just stamp the 'evil' on them and call it good. But when you read this it gets you to think about specific things that are wrong, you see more of how really evil they are, not simply that they are evil.

A Demon Danger.

After the PCs defeat (or force the rapid retreat of) a villanous necromancer/demon summoner, they discover a book. This book outlines how to summon a demon whose power increases according to the size of the summoning circle used to summon it. And after the PCs examine a map of the country, they find that the layout of the cities and roads match up with the required summoning circle. In fact, the final road that would complete the circle is currently in construction.

With anyone who can find out about the circle and the ritual to summon the demon able to somehow make the final road/line, and destruction of the cities and roads currently in existence out of the question (unless this is an evil campaign- that removes the moral quandary), how are the PCs going to solve this problem?